Money Is Hijacking Your Mind

You probably care more about money than you realize. (Photo: Getty Images)

Would you ever guess that one of the VPs at JPMorgan Chase is also a children’s book author? Or that this same person also happens to be a Grammy-award winning jazz album producer, and has traveled the world to research the origins of money and how it affects us?

Meet Kabir Sehgal, whose new book, Coined, looks at the neuroscience of our relationship with money. And what he has to say affects all of us.

Sehgal explained that money activates different regions of the brain, including the reward and fear centers, in the exact same way as someone who is about to do a hit of cocaine.

He also shared that just saying the word “money” can stimulate your skin, and actually touching it can numb your senses.

And did you know that your FICO score can be affected by your genes? That’s because there are genes that give you a predisposition to take greater or lesser risks. That means a lot of our financial decisions are made on a subconscious level.

Sehgal also explained that the idea of gaining money is more exciting than actually receiving money. Ever heard the phrase “Money is a tool”? It’s not an empty metaphor. There’s a neurological basis involving our reactions to money — gaining it, losing it, and seeing it destroyed or wasted — that triggers a natural response to survival.

Money is even a big topic in religion. In the book of Matthew in the Bible, 80 percent of the parables are about money. Across all the faiths there’s a different type of logic around money than what we act on now, and that logic is “less is more.”

You need it to take care of yourself and your family, but as you age, you learn that there is more to life. Money is a symbol of value. It represents many different things to us. But how we react to it, how we measure our own successes and failures by our finances, is something most people don’t consider.

ABOUT LEWIS HOWES: Lewis is a pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur who hosts the top-ranked podcast The School of Greatness. He interviews the best and brightest minds in health, entrepreneurship, relationships and lifestyle. Follow Lewis on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.